Reinhold Niebuhr Quotes

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"Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr" was an American theology/theologian, ethics / ethicist, public intellectual, commentator on politics and public affairs, and professor at Union Theological Seminary (New York) /Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years. The brother of another prominent theological ethicist, H. Richard Niebuhr, he is also known for authoring the Serenity Prayer, and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.[http://www.house.mo.gov/famous.aspx?fm=20 Hall of Famous Missourians] Among his most influential books are Moral Man and Immoral Society and The Nature and Destiny of Man. Starting as a minister with working-class and labor class sympathies in the 1920s oriented to Liberal Christianity/theological pacifism, he shifted to Neo-Orthodox/neo-orthodox realist theology in the 1930s and developed the theo-philosophical perspective known as Christian realism. He attacked utopianism as ineffectual for dealing with reality, writing in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944):